


The Train to Paris

by Nightmares_and_Daydreams



Category: Carmen Sandiego (Cartoon 2019)
Genre: Awkward Conversations, F/M, Fluff, Post-Canon, Unresolved Emotional Tension, and shadowsan, and tigress, how does one tag, mentions of julia and chase, resolved emotional tension, that becomes, they meet on a train!, yeah i guess that's it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-31
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-18 01:28:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29110089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nightmares_and_Daydreams/pseuds/Nightmares_and_Daydreams
Summary: Three years later, Carmen and Gray bump into each other on a train to Paris.
Relationships: Gray | Crackle/Carmen Sandiego | Black Sheep
Comments: 16
Kudos: 140





	The Train to Paris

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for checking this out! It's an idea I came up with and decided to post to tide everyone over until I'm ready to publish my longer post-canon fic. My Tumblr is at the bottom.

It wasn’t the craziest thing in the world for a touring opera company to be on the train to Paris.

It wasn’t the craziest thing in the world for Carmen Sandiego to be on that train.

It was pushing it, though, for Carmen Sandiego and Graham Calloway to both be on that same train, a carriage over from each other.

She’d been wholly unprepared to see him, so much so that it wasn’t until she heard that achingly familiar voice that she even noticed his presence.

‘Thanks, mate!’ came a voice to her left, and she turned at once as if nineteen years of crime school weren’t drilled into her.

‘Gray?’ He froze. ‘What are you doing here?’

_ ‘Carmen _ ? I – the company, they’re on tour. Again. Why are you here?’

‘Visiting some old friends.’ That phrase brought up a wealth of memories, none of them actually related to Jules or Chase. Gray seemed to become aware of the people struggling past them and said, ‘We’d better move – which way are you going?’

‘That way,’ she said, tilting her head to the right. Carmen hesitated; he hadn’t reached out to her after the events of the final caper and all at once it occurred to her that the last  time they saw each other was when she tried to kill him. There was every chance he wanted nothing more to do with her, but he wasn’t leaving... he was looking at her expectantly, as if waiting for her to finish.  _ Gray always knew when there was something I wasn’t saying _ , she thought ruefully. ‘I’m in first class, I have some room if you want to talk somewhere less... crowded.’

‘Yeah, sure!’ he said. Following her into the carriage, he added, ‘We have until the train reaches Paris, after all.’ His words hit him a moment later and he winced. ‘I didn’t mean-’

‘I know. Kind of ironic, though. Like coming full circle.’

‘Hopefully it ends better this time.’

There was a prolonged pause.

‘So, you’re back at the opera?’ she tried. This was strange; nothing with Gray had ever been  _ awkward  _ before. At VILE they’d clicked at once, even after she’d failed her first year. Their last fateful train journey was full of banter and pleading, and considering her time limit there had been a rush to tell him the whole story, to make him understand, even join her. Even with his memories wiped it was unnervingly easy to settle back into old habits. But this was uncharted territory.

‘Yeah, for now at least. It’s a change from – before.’

‘I can imagine.’

There was a pause. Then- ‘How come we’re sitting here like this?’

She blinked. ‘I’m  gonna need you to elaborate a bit.’

‘I guess I’m wondering why you’d want to talk to me after everything.’

‘Why wouldn’t I?’ she said, confused. ‘Apparently I have you to thank for helping to... bring me back. But Chief said you didn’t leave any contact info so I thought you probably wanted nothing to do with me. I don’t blame you; I know you wouldn’t have been dragged into all this if not for me.’

‘What?’ He gaped at her. ‘No, Carmen, I – look, that person living that...  _ charmed  _ life, missing half his memories, wasn’t  me. Thanks to you I got back the real me, and that’s worth almost everything that happened. I got to choose how I’d live my life instead of it being forced on me so if anything, I want to thank you.’

That wasn’t what Carmen had expected to hear at all. It was yet another layer to the enigma that was Gray, she supposed – the longer she knew him the more aware she was that he could always pull the rug out from under her.

‘Why the radio silence, then?’ She almost hated how eager she was to hear the answer.

‘I thought it would be better for you,’ he admitted. ‘You had this whole new life, one which was better for you and you were happy. I was a reminder of the time you spent at VILE, and especially with the six months you’d just gone through I felt like you didn’t need me complicating your life. And you outgrew our time as students at VILE a long time ago.’

She couldn’t help the chuckle that escaped her. ‘Sorry, I’m not laughing at you. I just – do you remember when you invited me to coffee and I turned up across the street but didn’t actually come?’

‘Yes?’ he said uncertainly, not quite sure where this was going.

‘That was my thought process too – that you had a fresh start and I would only complicate that. It’s why I never tried to reach out unless it was absolutely necessary.’

‘I guess we’re both kind of disasters, huh?’

‘You could say that,’ she nodded, smiling. ‘But I did want to see you again after everything ended. For a moment I thought you were actually dead. That  _ I’d _ ’- __ she broke off, taking a deep breath. Hesitantly, shyly, Gray opened his arms to her. Two seconds that felt like an eternity passed, and then she crossed the carriage and sank into them. All at once it occurred to her how long it had been since she’d hugged him, and she buried her face in his shoulder, holding on tightly, not letting go.

‘That wasn’t you anymore than Graham the electrician you met was me,’ he said. ‘You would never do that. And all’s well that ends well – we're both okay now, we’re both ourselves. I just wish we’d talked to each other sooner.’

‘You know, from the day I first left VILE to the day I got you back, I missed you,’ she admitted. ‘And for the past few years too. I did outgrow being a student at VILE. I did outgrow trying to impress the faculty and arguing with Tigress. But I never outgrew you. I want you to be part of my life now too; like I said, without you I would never have got it back.’

‘From what I’ve heard, Shadowsan did most of it,’ he said. ‘I just triggered the process. Turned some lights on.’

‘It was an important part,’ she insisted. ‘It took both of you.’

‘I guess I just have trouble taking any credit when I sat by for months and didn’t do anything about it.’

‘Still. Thank you for saying something when you did. Especially since you stopped me before I could do something permanent.’

There was a silence. She sat still and breathed him in, taking comfort in his embrace for as long as she could.

‘Can we stay in contact this time?’ he asked softly.

‘I’d love that,’ she murmured. She extracted herself from his arms with great reluctance to give him her number.

‘I guess we can see each other more often now, without complications,’ he grinned.

She hugged him again.

It felt like coming home.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, kudos/comments would make my day! (Lord knows we need them with the way life is currently.)  
> My Tumblr is heroesandmasterminds.


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